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This Is NOT A Coddling Accident!
Howard Lindzon
June 03, 2019
Short rant today because I am so aggravated…
But first – this tweet from Josh made me LOL today:
OK..to the rantmobile…
Michael Batnick has a great post up today titled ‘The Coddling Of The American Investor‘. Read it after you finish reading my post…
In his post, Michael shares this great quote from John Roberts – Chief Justice of the United States, who gave a commencement speech at his son’s middle school graduation ceremony:
From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to know the value of justice. I hope that you will suffer betrayal because that will teach you the importance of loyalty. Sorry to say, but I hope you will be lonely from time to time so that you don’t take friends for granted. I wish you bad luck, again, from time to time so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either. And when you lose, as you will from time to time, I hope every now and then, your opponent will gloat over your failure. It is a way for you to understand the importance of sportsmanship. I hope you’ll be ignored so you know the importance of listening to others, and I hope you will have just enough pain to learn compassion. Whether I wish these things or not, they’re going to happen. And whether you benefit from them or not will depend upon your ability to see the message in your misfortunes.
I am 53 and was definitely coddled by my parents. I was lucky to be born in Toronto and while I blame my parents for a lot of things, I won’t for the coddling. I think protect and coddle is just the natural state for normal parents if given the choice.
Sure enough, as soon as I left home at 17, everything John Roberts mentioned in the commencement speech has happened in my life . Luckily for me and hopefully because of a lot of good decisions made along the way, nothing too devastating to date.
Back to Michael’s post about what he calls ‘The Coddled American Investor’. I almost always agree with Michael but he’s incorrect re the coddling American investors have received. A better word choice would be lied to, lured and even begged to join the stock market. Since I started investing in 1994, I have seen so many boom and busts which were poorly recognized by almost everyone, including the Fed. I do not feel coddled.
Today, people have incredible networks and mentorship available 24/7/365. Don’t let yourselves be called dumb or coddled or a victim when it comes to your money and investments.
Now go back and coddle those gen-z snowflakes of yours…but make sure you send them John Roberts quote to read a few times a year.
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